This paper studies a buyer’s procurement strategies in a two-stage supply chain with price-sensitive demand. The buyer procures a product from a supplier and then sells to the marketplace. Market demand is stochastic and depends on the buyer’s selling price. The supplier’s production cost is private information, and the buyer only knows the distribution of the cost. Both the buyer and the suppl...

Electronic contracts are a means of representing agreed responsibilities and expected behaviour of autonomous agents acting on behalf of businesses. They can be used to regulate behaviour by providing negative consequences, penalties, where the responsibilities and expectations are not met, i.e. the contract is violated. However, long-term business relationships require some flexibility in the ...

The notion of contracts as reference points provides the basis for a deeper understanding of important phenomena such as the employment contract, vertical integration, firm scope, authority, and delegation. Previous experiments lend support to this notion but they ignore realistic aspects of trading relationships such as informal agreements and ex-post renegotiation or revision. Here we show th...

Electronic contracts are a means of representing agreed responsibilities and expected behaviour of autonomous agents acting on behalf of businesses. They can be used to regulate behaviour by providing negative consequences, penalties, where the responsibilities and expectations are not met, the contract is violated. However, long-term business relationships require some flexibility in the face ...

In the competitive global business environment, enterprises should effectively respond to and satisfy customer needs. Outsourcing manufacturing is an effective method of adjusting the flexibility of production capability. To ensure final product quality, evaluating and selecting a contract manufacturer is essential. Process capability indices are extensively adopted in manufacturing to determin...

A two-layer multi-time scale stochastic production simulation framework is constructed to account for the long-term contract electricity quantity of ultra-high voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission. On upper layer, based on characteristics load demand and renewable energy output extracted from historical operating data, monthly daily models are carried out considering seasonal hydropower ...